Widow of bear-mauling victim sues feds

John Keilman, Tribune reporter

The widow of a Park Ridge man mauled by a grizzly bear in Wyoming last year is suing the federal government, contending that its researchers had removed signs that would have warned her husband he was entering dangerous ground.

Erwin Evert, 70, was killed in a wilderness area near Yellowstone National Park, not far from where he and his wife, Yolanda, a retired English instructor at Oakton Community College, kept a cabin. Government researchers had been trapping, tranquilizing and releasing grizzly bears in the area as part of a long-running monitoring project.

Authorities said Evert, a well-regarded amateur botanist, had gone for an afternoon walk when he came upon a bear after it had begun to stir. He was not carrying bear-repelling spray or a gun, contrary to what some locals advocated, and the animal attacked and killed him.

Attorney Emily Rankin, who represents Evert's wife and daughter, said Evert's lack of protection was immaterial. The real issue, she said, is that the researchers who tranquilized the bear had taken down signs that would have warned Evert away from the animal. He had no idea it was there, she said.

"The feds created a danger, and unknown to Mr. Evert, he walked right into it," she said.

Shortly after Evert's death, some of his friends and the local sheriff said Evert knew that the bear trapping was taking place and that he had apparently gone to take a look. Rankin, though, said that wasn't the case.

Evert had come across trapping signs in a different part of the forest and didn't return, Rankin said. She said he never saw the signs in the area where he was killed.

Officials at the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees the monitoring program, declined to comment. Last year, federal researchers said their crew members had circled the trapping site with warning signs before their work began, though they declined to address when the signs came down.

Rankin said that according to a government investigation, the crew members removed the signs shortly before Evert went for his walk. Though the crew members frequently went by the family's cabin, she said, they never told Evert or his wife that the trapping was taking place nearby.

"These folks had a duty to warn and notify the folks in the area what they were doing, and they absolutely did not," Rankin said.

Yolanda Evert declined to comment. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Wyoming, seeks $5 million in damages.